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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Kodak Digital Cinema System
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 03-09-2001 09:20 PM
Digital Cinema is here now, it is not going to go away. Digital will live along side of 35mm Film and 70mm film venues as well as IMAX and other Mega Systems for the time being. There is no rush to replace any existing format. They have improved dramaticly since the release of " The Phantom Menace" in June of 99'. I ran both the digital TI Projector in one theatre and the JVC Hughes/Qualcomm in another theatre.
With the TI Projector we played on a 50' wide screen in sync with a 35mm print, split down the middle...25' digital on the left and 25' 35mm film on the right. The audience was made up of industry professionals. Other than some color differences on close up scenes when a persons face was directly center, it was difficult to notice which was film and which was digital. Two weeks into the run we were playing "The Phantom Menace" on two screens one digital and one 35mm. Needless to say, the digital presentation was far superior to film after a two week grind. A hundred years ago we were still in the Nickelodeon stage of film presentation. In the year 2100 our presentation today will, likely seem as primative to the members of film-tech (digi-tech)as the Nicholodeon does to us. We are not going away tomorrow or this year or this decade. It will be a good 30 to 40 years before digital becomes all consuming. Digital projection will one day be lit by fiber optics from a external source. The young exhibitor's and technician's of today will be living and growing in an extreemly exciting time in the entertainment industry. Grow with it but always remember your roots. These are great times also, preserve the past but embrace the future. Film will never die as long as we remember. Plus in 2100 Brad Miller VI will be the moderator. Wonder what he will look like?
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John Pytlak
Film God
Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 03-09-2001 09:51 PM
Bob: IMHO, 1280x1024 pixels just don't cut it. The pixel structure and "jaggies" are very visible and annoying unless you sit in the back 2/3 of most modern auditoriums. I sat through multiple presentations at both Loews Paramus and Secaucus, and was dissatisfied unless I sat farther from the screen. The presentations I've seen since then haven't gotten any better. Almost everyone on Film-Tech and on the SMPTE DC28 study groups agree many more pixels are needed. A poorly exposed film may sometimes be grainy sitting close to the screen, but random grains are less annoying than a fixed raster of pixels and "jaggies". And even a film with slightly soft focus is preferable to the edge enhancement masquerading as sharpness that I have too often seen in digital displays.------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
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Aaron Haney
Master Film Handler
Posts: 265
From: Cupertino, CA, USA
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 03-10-2001 05:59 AM
Bob Maar wrote: quote:
Needless to say, the digital presentation was far superior to film after a two week grind.
"Needless to say"? Depends on how well the film was being handled. And unless the digital presentation's resolution suddenly increased from 1280x1024 to something higher, I'm sure the film image still had more detail, regardless of whether it was partially hidden by dirt and scratches. I'm really tired of all these "worst-case scenario" arguments (note Bob, I'm not railing against you personally, but against these types of arguments in general). Proponents of digital cinema would have everyone believe that scratches and dirt magically appear on every frame of film ever made, all by themselves. That's just bull. Film only gets screwed up when it's improperly handled. And improper handling is actually rather rare in the real world. I frequently go to movies two and three weeks into the runs, and the prints almost always look brand new. Last summer I went to see "Gladiator" at the Century 25 in Union City a full two months after the movie opened, and the print had not a speck of dirt or a single scratch anywhere in sight! No way I would trade that for a pathetic 1280x1024 lossy-compressed digital video image! Try this analogy on for size. Recently, various companies have been pushing the concept of "e-books": small, electronic devices that display text on LCD screens, and are meant to be a replacement for printed paper books. Now suppose a salesman from one of these companies came up to you and told you that e-books were superior because the pages of paper books get dirty and torn during normal use. Suppose he tried to claim that "books just get that way", no matter how careful you are with them, and that the only thing you could do was to start using e-books. Would you listen to anything that salesman had to say from then on? Of course not! So why do people listen when digital cinema companies try to claim that "film just gets that way" when it comes to dirt and scratches? With proper handling, film can be run over and over with no degradation at all! Speaking as someone in the computer industry, I have to say the most important thing to keep in mind here is "beware the hype". Hell, these products are being pushed by companies from the computer and electronics industries -- industries which gave us terms such as "vaporware" and "FUD". Whenever I hear about how film "degrades after each run" or how it unavoidably gets dirty and scratched, alarm bells go off in my head saying, "FUD!" It's time to stop putting up with the FUD. Every time you see a news article about digital cinema saying how bad film is, send 'em a letter or an e-mail about it. Every time you hear a digital cinema salesman saying how bad film is, stand up and tell 'em they're full of it. FUD should not be tolerated. Yes, digital cinema will take over eventually, due to matters of cost, convenience, flexibility, and (hopefully), quality. I'm just really concerned when I hear people like Phil Barlow of Disney saying the current state of the art is "good enough", or companies like Technicolor saying they want to install 1000 DLP projectors in theaters at their current level of quality, just because it will allow them to exert a vice-like grip on distribution (not that they actually admit to that last part). It sounds like people are rushing into this, and in the rush, we'll end up getting stuck with mediocre quality. That has me worried. I've said all this before, though. I guess I need to stop writing these hugely long rants. I just can't help it sometimes. I care too much.
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Aaron Haney
Professional Complainer
Apple Computer, Inc.
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 03-10-2001 06:40 AM
Getting off-topic a bit: the whole "electronic book" thing seems to have been totally mis-marketed. No one is going to buy this for pleasure reading. Think about it--why replace something that is relatively inexpensive and convenient with something that is neither? I like physical books, and I really don't see the point of reading a novel off an LCD.
That said, there _are_ some markets where the idea makes sense. For example, my auto mechanic has several shelves full of service manuals that are apparently rather expensive and need to be updated regularly. I'm sure that he would jump at the chance to replace all that with a single hardcover-size "electronic book" that contains all of the same information on a single chip, PCMCIA card, or some other storage format. Similarly, it would be cool to have every manual in the Film-Tech CD easily readable with a handheld device, without having to spend a lot of time and paper to print them all out and then store them.
There are some great applications for this type of technology, but they're generally in the area of specialized reference material and not in the area of general printed matter. Maybe (thinking out loud here) the same applies to electronic cinema. Maybe if some of the smaller theatres that can't "do film right" anyway were to convert to DLP or ILA, the distributors could put more effort into making smaller runs of higher-quality release prints for the larger theatres, and maybe 70mm prints for the largest houses. Perhaps this is wishful thinking, though, given the current state of the exhibition business.
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Tim Reed
Better Projection Pays
Posts: 5246
From: Northampton, PA
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 03-11-2001 02:19 PM
John, I agree. 2K should be the absolute bare minimum. This will be a moot point in the near future anyway. It's only going to get better, as resolutions increase. ------------------
Better Projection Pays!
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